


soon you'll know the ringing of the rifle from the tree

by noahfronsenburg



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Assassin's Creed: Forsaken Spoilers, Canon Disabled Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Dysfunctional Family, Haytham Kenway Lives, M/M, Parent-Child Relationship, Post-Canon, no betas we die like men, not historically accurate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-06-19 02:11:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15500016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noahfronsenburg/pseuds/noahfronsenburg
Summary: Instead, one thing sticks with him: Haytham traded Achilles his life for his disgrace, with a musket ball between them as a betting chip. He’d not given Achilles the option to choose—he had made the decision for them both. Haytham has always been a man who abides by his decisions.Ratonhnhaké:ton will not let the end of his father’s life come at his own hand. He refuses.This, at least, he will not do.





	soon you'll know the ringing of the rifle from the tree

**Author's Note:**

> preemptively: this is just a first take to try to get myself into the headspaces of these characters. this has not been edited even once and is more just a writing exercise for myself i wanted to share as i work my way into my big ac3 project. i hope you have fun with it??? anyway stay tuned to this channel for the next year and a half or so to watch me ruin my life with this game. in the meantime: haytham/achilles Good.

Achilles intends it to be a rebuke; a lesson. He hopes that Ratonhnhaké:ton will listen and learn, see that his father cannot be saved. The way Achilles recounts the story of how Haytham crippled him, shows Ratonhnhaké:ton the entry and exit wounds of the shot that went in and out the front of his right shin, it is meant to teach him. He is telling Ratonhnhaké:ton that in no unclear terms Haytham Kenway cannot be saved, he is too-far gone and cruel beyond belief, even if Ratonhnhaké:ton believes there may still be _something_ in him, even after the debacle with Washington, it is futile.

Haytham made his bed, and he has laid in it now for almost fifty years. Ratonhnhaké:ton has tried to pull him back from the precipice, has ignored Achilles and gone with his gut, and what has he gained from it? A dead friend. A home almost put to the torch again. A disquieting feeling in his gut that says _you have come so close, try once more_ even as it says _Father must die_.

What Ratonhnhaké:ton gets from Achilles’ lecture is none of the things he is supposed to take away from it.

Instead, one thing sticks with him: Haytham traded Achilles his life for his disgrace, with a musket ball between them as a betting chip. He’d not given Achilles the option to choose—he had made the decision for them both. Haytham has always been a man who abides by his decisions.

When Ratonhnhaké:ton goes to Fort George, he finally brings himself to pack the shot and powder for his pistol, his first time to bring it with him for what he knows is meant to be an assassination.

The idea is nascent. The plan is unclear.

But Ratonhnhaké:ton will not let the end of his father’s life come at his own hand. He refuses.

This, at least, he will not do.

 

 

Ratonhnhaké:ton has two thoughts he can spare at Fort George after his injury throws him to the ground: the first is that, perhaps, bombarding the fort while he himself is in it was not his best plan, and the second is that he has to find either Charles Lee or his father. Whoever he finds first, the other will come soon after. He is certain of this—they are nearly a matched pair, and he is assured of some sort of success no matter what the days events hold.

Which is why when he whispers, more to himself than to anyone, “Where are you, Charles?” he is almost relieved to hear his father’s voice.

“Gone.”

Ratonhnhaké:ton has thought long and hard about the balance of power between himself and his father. He is taller than Haytham, and heavier—were it merely a contest of physical strength, he would win. However, this is not that. Ratonhnhaké:ton is injured, Haytham is fresh. Haytham is faster than he is, leaner, quicker on the draw, and more skilled in combat. He’s had thirty years more than Ratonhnhaké:ton to perfect his hand at dealing death, and he’s not fighting for an opening.

He is fighting to kill.

His father says as much to his face, but Ratonhnhaké:ton cannot hear the words over the pain in his side, starburst and brilliant. It makes his hearing fade in and out, and he’s so focused on staying alive, not letting Haytham kill him and not killing him in turn, that he cannot focus on whatever words come out of either of their mouths. What few strikes he does manage to get in are weak, not enough to truly cripple his father or to slow their fight, and it’s not until they’re both sent flying by a cannonstrike that Ratonhnhaké:ton sees his opening.

He rolls to one side as Haytham is staggering to his feet, his hat knocked from his head, wiping blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, his left arm held gingerly at his side. There’s blood all down the inside of his wrist, ruining his coat sleeve, dripping from his fingers, puddling beneath his nails.

Ratonhnhaké:ton tries one last time.

“Surrender,” he says, whispering, as Haytham walks over to stand above him, panting. He has his uninjured hand pressed to his side, above where Ratonhnhaké:ton scored a shallow but no-doubt painful gash over his ribs. “And I will spare you.”

His father gives him that half-smile that seems to always flit about his mouth like a moth beside a light whenever he’s almost pleased. It is what Ratonhnhaké:ton has grown to associate with his father as something paternal—some brief gesture toward their relation. “Brave words from a man about to die,” Haytham quips back, and Ratonhnhaké:ton can hear how out of breath he is in his voice. Haytham is not young, and while Ratonhnhaké:ton was injured to begin with, now Haytham is far from well.

“You fare no better.” Haytham shakes his head, huffing a laugh. He tilts his head back as he bends down, because Ratonhnhaké:ton has still not risen, and reaches towards his neck. His monologue means nothing to Ratonhnhaké:ton, who gets his left hand up to shove at Haytham, lets his father get his hands around his neck. This is what he needs. He needs Haytham to be paying no attention, to be focused entirely on the kill with his hidden blade cracked, he needs Haytham to barely be aware of the world around him.

Haytham has always loved the sound of his own voice.

So Ratonhnhaké:ton lets that hide the sound of him drawing his pistol, the cock, and tilts it upright even as his vision begins to go dark at the edges. He presses the muzzle to his father’s shin, and closes his eyes.

“Forgive me,” he whispers, and pulls the trigger.

 

 

When the concussive blast clears his ears and Ratonhnhaké:ton has regained his breath, he can hear his father crying. It is the first time he’s heard the man make anything like a pained noise, and he rolls to sit up slowly, cradling his own injured side, holstering his pistol.

Haytham is curled half on his side on the ground, blood everywhere. He’s clutching at his knee, his fingers white-knuckled, his face turned into the bloody sod beneath him. “Damned saints in heaven, Connor,” Haytham whispers, his voice cracking, “Could you not have simply blown my head off? Your aim’s better than that.”

Ratonhnhaké:ton kneels beside him and takes the belt he brought with him for this purpose from his pouches, rolls Haytham onto his back. Haytham cries out, in pain or agony, and spits furious curses at him as Ratonhnhaké:ton pulls his hands away from the wound. It’s clean—or as clean as it can be in this situation—and Ratonhnhaké:ton quickly ties the belt off above it, tight enough that he won’t bleed any more, a makeshift but effective tourniquet. Then, he pulls out a bottle of whiskey, boiled free of impurities, and takes his knife to slice away Haytham’s trouser leg and tugs his boot down as gently as he can.

When he does so, Haytham makes a noise like he’s been stabbed and his head hits the ground, his eyes clenched shut and his teeth bared. The muscles in his neck stand out against his skin, and he is frighteningly pale. “Damnit, Connor,” he whispers, his voice cracking.

“A life for a life,” Ratonhnhaké:ton says, softly, as he pours the whiskey into the wound. “As you once did for Achilles, I now do for you.”

“ _Charity_?” Haytham’s voice cracks, pained. “You’ve killed me.”

“Not by my hands,” Ratonhnhaké:ton tells him, as Haytham gasps for breath, pale with shock and pain. Ratonhnhaké:ton is not much better, in all honesty. They’re both in need of medical help. Haytham will die without it, Ratonhnhaké:ton will merely near that final ending. “It is up to your divine providence now.”

“You fucking brat,” is the last thing Haytham says before Ratonhnhaké:ton binds his leg with two splints to keep the damage from getting worse, and then summarily picks him up. His father makes this soft, broken whimper of agony, his chest deflating as all the air gasps out of his lungs, and faints over his shoulder.

It’s for the best.

Were Haytham to keep talking at him, Ratonhnhaké:ton would probably cease to be able to convince himself that this is a good idea.

 

 

Ratonhnhaké:ton hands his father to Faulkner aboard the _Aquila_ , with strict instructions to sail for the Homstead as fast as can be—but even then, slowed by his own injuries, Haytham is delirious and hot with fever. Faulkner directs him below even as Ratonhnhaké:ton desperately tries to set his own injuries, and stares down at him, glowering. “I didn’t like having him on my ship the first time, Connor. I like it little and less now. What am I supposed to do if he dies on me?”

“Throw his body overboard,” Ratonhnhaké:ton replies. “Or whatever it is you would do. If he lives or dies is out of all our hands now. If he makes it to the Homestead, send for Dr. White.”

“And where should we be writing to you, if he makes it?” Faulkner has long since learned Ratonhnhaké:ton’s ways; he knows he doesn’t intend to come home for a long time.

“You don’t.”

Faulkner says nothing as Ratonhnhaké:ton leaves.

 

 

Much of the following year turns into massive gaps in Ratonhnhaké:ton’s memory. Between his injuries at Fort George and his subsequent attendance at Haytham’s funeral, lacking a body, his time incarcerated, his time chasing Lee, the smoke he inhales—the wound in his side never gets a chance to heal, slows him, stills him.

Beyond his own focus on remaining alive to see this thing through, there is little time for Ratonhnhaké:ton to think about his father and Achilles—when he left for Fort George, Achilles was nearly on death’s doorstep, the flu having weakened his already-shattered body. Haytham could well have died on the voyage, Ratonhnhaké:ton has no way to be sure. He has not seen or spoken to his Assassins in months. He has been in and out of jail, tortured, run half the length of the Colonies and back, and done it with blood on his hands and his own health failing.

He is too hell-bent on revenge to wonder who will be left alive, if anyone, to welcome him home. Should he even get there. Should either he or Charles Lee, his gut festering with a musketball wound, survive for him to be able to _return_ home.

The day Ratonhnhaké:ton runs him to ground in a Monmouth tavern, a month after they both staggered free of the fire, Charles is waiting for him. He has drawn the other chair out from the table for Ratonhnhaké:ton to sit down at, and he nearly falls into it, his forehead pricked with cold sweat, his lungs shaking and seizing with the effort it takes to keep him moving, nauseous with pain. He takes his knife from his hidden blade, and sets it on the table, between them, equidistant.

Neither of them move to take it. They merely watch it, knowing, waiting.

Charles is flushed and pallid with fever, his thinning hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. He breathes in quick, shallow pants, and is hunched over his injury. Neither of them say anything but look at one another, two dying men at the end of the world.

Charles nudges over his beer. Ratonhnhaké:ton hesitates long enough that Charles makes a face, takes a drink to prove it isn’t poisoned, and then pushes it towards him again. This time, Ratonhnhaké:ton takes it; he is grateful for the sip. He is terribly dehydrated. He knows this. There simply has been no time.

“Well,” Charles says softly. “You’ve got your way at last.” Ratonhnhaké:ton does not reply, merely takes another drink, and passes back the beer. Eventually, he nods, and they both fall silent for a long moment, watching the patrons. There is nowhere for either one of them to go: only one man will get up alive from this table. If it is Charles, he will live perhaps two weeks, at the outside, before infection does him in.

They have all the time in the world.

“Why did you do it?” Ratonhnhaké:ton asks at last. “I have always wondered. You hate Washington, you always have; you love my father. You disobeyed Haytham when you killed my mother on his orders, and for what reason? What did you gain from it? Not his trust.” Haytham, he knew, had never really, truly, forgiven that. For all his father boasted of it.

“No, certainly not that.” Charles’ voice is dark. “I had hoped, when the orders had gone through, I might prove to George I served but one master, and it was him. Gain his trust, to execute him later. That, of course, never amounted to anything.” There’s self-deprecation in his voice; an acknowledgement of a plan failed.

“Then why?”

Charles stares down at the mug of beer. He drains it the rest of the way, and holds it up to the barkeep, who comes and refills it in their silence. Charles nurses it for some time, then passes it to Ratonhnhaké:ton once again. “Avarice,” he murmurs at last. “Haytham and your mother. You, once we met. Even as a child, you were his spitting image.” He swallows; Ratonhnhaké:ton knows he is not lying. What reason has he to? He has nothing to gain. Nothing to lose. “I hated her for stealing him from me, however brief their dalliance was.”

“So you killed her.”

“Can you deny having thought the same?” Charles throws it back at him, bloody spittle flecking his mustache. He wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. “Look me in the eyes and say you haven’t been so dogged in my pursuit because it infuriated Haytham.” Ratonhnhaké:ton cannot; he bows his head, acquiescing. “There was no lofty goal in it.”

“It hurt him.”

“Do you think I’ve not spent the last twenty years regretting it? Had I not killed her, he could have raised you to the Rite.” Ratonhnhaké:ton has thought of that, too, and the implications are chilling. “It’s done now,” Charles adds, darkly. “For whatever it may have brought us. It’s done. They’re both dead.”

Ratonhnhaké:ton does not nod. Simply takes another sip, and they fall back into silence.

It is Charles’ turn to ask a question. “What did you do with his body?” He asks, his voice low, hoarse with emotion. “We could never find it, no matter how hard we looked.”

For a long time, Ratonhnhaké:ton does not answer. He thinks. They sit for long enough that the inkeep comes by and delivers a plate of food that sits between them relatively untouched; an offering that the gods have turned aside. Charles picks at the toast, Ratonhnhaké:ton the potatoes. Neither of them speaks.

“I do not know,” he says at last, for it is not a lie. He _doesn’t_ know. If Haytham yet lives, his body is his own, to do with as he pleases. If he died, Ratonhnhaké:ton cannot even begin to guess where Faulkner buried him at sea. “I was delirious from my own wounds. I could not tell you where he lays.” Charles closes his eyes, then, and presses his hand over his face. He takes a few quick, pained breaths.

Ratonhnhaké:ton realizes Lee is crying, and he does not know what to do with that.

“So what will you do now?” Charles asks. “You’ll have your revenge.”

Ratonhnhaké:ton has not thought much about it. Go home, first of all. Then what—he doesn’t know.

“See the States into their future,” he settles on.

“You’ve no more love lost for Washington than I do,” Charles is looking at him, his green eyes dark and bloodshot. “And yet you’d prop up his pillar?”

“No man is perfect.” Ratonhnhaké:ton looks at his hands, his nails cracked and ragged, stained with dirt and blood. “You colonists least of all. Myself as much as you. I do not intend to save or serve him as I once did, but you think of him still as young and untried, when he is as old as you yourself. The War changed him.” The war changed them all. None of them are the same as they were before it, no matter how young or how old. “I thought you had learned that long ago.” Charles’ mouth is a twisted hook of a sneer.

“Igne natura renovatur integra,” Charles says. Ratonhnhaké:ton stares at him. “Latin,” he explains. “One of the benefits of a Classical education. Through fire is the world reborn.” Now his sneer has turned into something mocking, and he presses his hand to his stomach, over the wound Ratonhnhaké:ton gave him months ago. “Not always, it seems, stronger for the forge.”

“You seem regretful.”

“Would you not be?” Charles clenches his fist. “So close to greatness.” He opens it. “Yet so far.”

It is strange, Ratonhnhaké:ton realizes as he talks to the man, that the monster in his memories is so much smaller in real life. He has lived every day dreaming of the moment he will kill Charles Lee, but in practice, sitting beside him, speaking to him, he is so insignificant. So worthless.

They finish the beer. Charles calls for a refill. Neither of them touches it.

“Tell me, Connor. A dying request.” Ratonhnhaké:ton makes a noise of assent. “How does this revenge taste?”

“Tasteless,” he says, immediately. “Ash. You should have died long ago, by my hand or not.”

“As should you, my boy.” Charles looks back at him again, and shuts his eyes. He nods.

Ratonhnhaké:ton leans forward, presses his hand to the man’s chest. He presses their foreheads together, and listens to the barely-present sloughing of his heartbeat as it bleeds out around Ratonhnhaké:ton’s blade buried hilt-deep in his chest.

The sigh Charles gives as he slumps, stilling, is not one of pain. He does not even seem to be giving a fnial breath of regret.

It is simply release.

 

 

It is eight days from Monmouth to the homestead, and when Ratonhnhaké:ton arrives, he is almost delirious with fever, his horse at a lather and no better. He falls off the saddle halfway through the village, and the last he hears in consciousness is shouts and calls for Dr. White. He is running a fever, he knows. Perhaps infected—he never cleaned the injury he got from the spar of wood well enough. He has been moving non-stop for almost a year, chasing Charles Lee the length of New England.

He wakes in his bed, with no memory of how he got there.

There is sunlight, pouring in through the open shutters, and Ratonhnhaké:ton stares out them for what seems to be a very long time, too exhausted to move. The house is as quiet as it usually is. Coming from outside he can hear distant noise—although not as well as he once could; the second cannonshot in Fort George has left him half-deaf in his left ear. But he can hear the distant sounds of wood being sawed, children yelling, horses neighing, and someone hollering at someone else.

He closes his eyes again, and falls asleep once more. Ratonhnhaké:ton wakes to footsteps, and is half-standing before he realizes he’s moved, and then he’s out of breath, doubled over and face blanched in pain, as the footsteps come in. “Goodness!” It’s a woman’s voice; one he doesn’t recognize. Ratonhnhaké:ton looks up, and freezes when he sees her.

“Sister?” His mouth moves strangely over the Kanien’kehá:ka, and she blinks at him. She’s dressed sensibly if a little plain, in Colonial clothes, and can’t be more than five years his elder.

“Sorry,” the woman says after a moment, in English. “I don’t—my mother died before she could teach me.” She’s mixed, as Ratonhnhaké:ton is—perhaps second generation, with lighter skin, and comes over, pushes him back into bed. “You’re not to be up and about. Dr. White had a right bloody row with you while you were out, given you couldn’t answer, I’d say he won.”

“H—“ Ratonhnhaké:ton starts, and then winces as he feels how dry his mouth is, letting her chivvy him back into bed. She hands him a cup of water and he takes it, although his hand aches to lift it. He’s heavily bandaged, he can see, and drinks it slowly, until he can speak. “How long have I been asleep?”

“Four days. Dr. White says you’ll need at least another week in bed, and all liquids for at least the first day. I’ve left you your bedpan, and I’ll go get you some soup.”

“I do not understand,” Ratonhnhaké:ton manages at last, when he’s got his mouth and throat working once again. “Who are you?”

“Zilpah,” she replies, easy enough. “I’m Master Kenway’s housekeeper. And glad I am I got here when I did, because if I’d been a few weeks later, those two useless old men would have to be taking care of you.”

This is the first time that Ratonhnhaké:ton knows for a fact that his father, and Achilles, are still alive.

He shuts his eyes, and breathes a sigh of relief that he was not sure he was holding.

 

 

Despite Dr. White’s orders, Ratonhnhaké:ton is out of bed as soon as he’s eaten. His vision reels, and he has to sit on the side of his mattress for a long time, head ducked between his shoulders, counting his breaths. But he does, eventually, manage to get up. His progress down the stairs is slow and painful, his right hand pressed to the jarring agony of his side, and he skulks quietly past the kitchen where Zilpah is glaring at him, her mouth a thin line, but says nothing.

Definitely Haytham’s housekeeper, then.

Outside, it is sunny and clear. He rounds the house, looking for either man who apparently now lives there, and sees his father immediately.

Or at least, his father’s back.

Ratonhnhaké:ton’s progress from the house to the stables is agonizing; each step takes what feels like years, and the pain leaves him light-headed and his vision grey and blurry. He makes it as far as the bench by the stables before he eases down, out of breath and gasping, and listens to his father mucking about in the hay.

“You’re supposed to be in bed,” Haytham says. “Zilpah’s spent too long around me if she’s letting you run amuck.” Ratonhnhaké:ton feels a curl of wry humor deep in his chest; they are very alike, yes. He chances a look over at his father—even from here, he can only see Haytham’s back. He is bent over in one of the stalls; by the sound of it, he’s wrestling with a foal. It’s hard to guess at his condition when just looking at his back, but he is the least-dressed Ratonhnhaké:ton has ever seen him. No coat or cloak; just a waistcoat and shirtsleeves, and both hang loosely on his frame. His hair is longer, down almost to his shoulderblades.

There is more white than grey in it now, Ratonhnhaké:ton notices. For only a year, it is a truly stark difference.

“I had not thought to find you here.” Haytham makes a quiet noise.

“Well, I had nowhere else to go. Nobody knew where you or Charles were the past year. I could have set up shop in my old haunts in Boston, but you’ve killed the Colonial Rite, however temporarily, and you don’t know where my house in Virginia is. I had no way to find you again.”

“I had not thought you would want to.”

Haytham is silent. The foal whinnies at him, and he chides it, gently. “You are my son, Connor,” he says at last. “However little I’ve been your father, and whatever bad blood lays still between us, there is that. I do care for you a great deal, whatsoever you may think of it. I wanted to know if you would live after your clear attempt to get yourself killed.”

But Ratonhnhaké:ton _is_ alive; he knows that Haytham must know what that means.

“Charles Lee is dead.”

It is the first time he’s put voice to the words. The first time he has spoken them. It is the first that he has truly been able to acknowledge the fact as real; his life’s duty done. It stuns him, for a moment, the unexpected force of the realization, long enough that he realizes Haytham has gone silent.

“I guessed,” his father’s voice is wry in the murmur, but raw. Ratonhnhaké:ton looks at him again, and finds his shoulders are tight, hunched slightly. “There was never any easy ending,” he adds, more to himself than to Ratonhnhaké:ton. “Either my son or the love of my life. One of you would have to die. I thought—I sought to change that, however little good it did in the end.”

Ratonhnhaké:ton has guessed, for years, at what his father and Charles Lee shared. He’s never been certain, but now, to hear Haytham speak it, is sobering.

“He gave you a kind eulogy.”

“He would.”

“Father—“

“‘Those who plot the destruction of others often fall themselves,’” Haytham says it abruptly. “From the _Phaedrus_. You came near enough, Connor.” There is a rustle, and Ratonhnhaké:ton looks over again as his father shifts, graps ahold of the stall doors, and slowly pushes to his feet, leaning heavily on his right leg as he does so. He pauses, sighs, and picks up a cane that Ratonhnhaké:ton hadn’t seen, leaning against the stall door.

It’s fine black wood: a gentleman’s cane. More fashion than function, at least on the outside. If Ratonhnhaké:ton had to hazard a guess, it probably houses a sword in the middle.

Ratonhnhaké:ton stops speaking, and instead studies his father’s face, trying to find what has changed in the past year. Haytham looks older, more than just a year should see: he looks nearer to sixty than fifty, his face aged and weathered. The white in his hair is accompanied by his skin still hanging loose around his jaw and throat with lost weight; his eyes sit hooded above hollow, dark sockets. His skin is sallow and pale with ill-health, and in the clearer light, Ratonhnhaké:ton can see that his hair is lustreless. He has been very ill, for a very long time.

He leans carefully on only his right leg. Ratonhnhaké:ton gestures towards it with his chin, in lieu of asking, and Haytham lifts his left leg slightly. He grits his teeth, grunting, and fumbles with his boot, putting the toe of his right onto the heel of his left, and jerks it off, carefully, before he pulls down his stocking and up his breeches and sticks his leg out for Ratonhnhaké:ton to look.

The scar is not a pretty one. It’s ugly, raw, and off-colored—Haytham’s leg hair grows around it awkwardly, and it’s deeply pocked. His leg, Ratonhnhaké:ton realizes, is not straight any more: it bends, slightly, around the injury.

“I’ll give you this much,” Haytham says, his characteristic dry humor lacing his words, “You certainly know how to shoot a man.”

Ratonhnhaké:ton feels a smile at the corners of his mouth. “Does it pain you?”

“A great deal. Achilles reassures me quite regularly that I have twenty years of shared agony to catch up on, and it’s no less my due. You may rest assured; I’ll like as not never kill a man again. You’ve quite put an end to my reign of terror, I should think. Very efficient of you.” Ratonhnhaké:ton’s curiosity sated, Haytham puts his leg away and picks up his cane again, limping heavily on his left leg as he walks over to offer Ratonhnhaké:ton a hand up.

When he stands, he realizes suddenly that he has to look _down_ at his father. Haytham is visibly shorter than him by enough that Ratonhnhaké:ton has to turn his neck down. Haytham studies him in turn, and lifts his free hand to tilt Ratonhnhaké:ton’s face to the side. “I heard about the fire,” he says. “That’s quite a burn on your ear.” Ratonhnhaké:ton shrugs. It’s superficial. His hair, when it grows back out, will likely cover it completely.

“Are you not...” he tries, following his father back up toward the house, barely keeping pace with him even slowed as he is by his leg. “Haytham, I killed Charles.”

“You’re an Assassin, Connor.” Haytham shakes his head. “I would get as much use out of hating a wolf for its nature for eating from a flock of sheep. You _kill Templars_. It is the purpose of the order. It is what you have spent your entire life in pursuit of.”

“Are you not angry?”

Three steps ahead of him, Haytham freezes. Ratonhnhaké:ton watches as his shoulders hitch up towards his ears. He does not move, stilling, and then lets out a shaking breath.

“I am _furious_ ,” Haytham says at last, his voice cracking on the final word. “I can scarce think straight.” His free hand clenches into a white-knuckled fist as he speaks. “I had hoped to coax you back to bed, before I lost the both of you in a day, but I see that hope was misplaced.”

“Father—“

“Damn you, Connor,” Haytham’s voice cracks again, and Ratonhnhaké:ton does not reach for him as he presses his free hand now, over his face, turns toward the bay rather than toward the house. He has covered his eyes, and the soft, sudden inhalation of breath he takes is clear enough to read. Haytham Kenway is not a man given to dramatic displays of emotion, and Ratonhnhaké:ton may not be particularly skilled at reading emotion from anybody, but he can read this. Haytham’s shoulders shake, and he curls his arm slightly around his torso, his cane clutched close to his chest. When he speaks, his voice is low and thick, cracking and harsh and painfully wet as he cries. “If you must insist on reminding me the man I loved lays dead and buried, begone with you to hell. Let me mourn in peace if you must remind me of it.”

Ratonhnhaké:ton finally wills himself into motion, and gently, sets his hand on Haytham’s shoulder. His father bristles, but does not force him to remove it.

Even with his weakness, what little strength he is able to summon ebbing and fading from his body, Ratonhnhaké:ton stands with his father just so he is not alone as he cries ugly, silent tears. He watches the flags atop the _Aquila_ ’s mast, focuses on that, rather than on Haytham, as if by not committing to memory the way the man looks as his heart shatters will somehow make it more private.

 

 

Achilles arrives two days later, back from a trip to Boston, and wakes Ratonhnhaké:ton by barging into his bedroom and hitting him over the thighs with his cane. He’s wide awake instantly and finds Achilles standing over him, glaring. “You,” the man snarls, his deep voice shaky and strained, “Are the stupidest fool alive on earth, and I should never have brought you in my front door.”

And then, to Ratonhnhaké:ton’s surprise, Achilles throws his cane aside, and eases down onto the side of his mattress, pulls him close, and hugs him.

It is the first time Achilles has ever shown such affection for Ratonhnhaké:ton. Ever.

He lays, half-awake and stunned, in Achilles’ arms, and then turns his face into his Mentor’s shoulder and shuts his eyes. “I am sorry if I worried you,” he admits, softly, just for the other man to hear.

He can feel Achilles laugh, can smell his tears.

“Think nothing of it, my dear, dear boy. I am merely very glad you made it home, and in something of a single piece, albeit inasmuch near thing.” Achilles does eventually pull back, and Ratonhnhaké:ton is surprised by how well he looks. At least someone who was meant to be at death’s doorstep is doing well, even if Ratonhnhaké:ton and Haytham are not. “I’ll appreciate having you back in the house. Someone needs to keep me from wringing your father’s fool neck. I used to think you must have gotten it from your mother.”

Ratonhnhaké:ton knows exactly what _it_ Achilles is referring to. _It_ is the all-encompassing tenacious bull-headedness that has led him to nearly die numerous times in the last ten yeas. His complete inability to stop, care for himself, ask for help, or let go of _anything_. And then, to make matters worse to argue about it being sensible afterwards. _It_ is the one thing he truly has in common with Haytham.

He ducks his head, bashful, to hide something that is almost a smile. “No. It comes from my father.”

“Unfortunately enough for all of us,” Achilles agrees. “Now maybe you can get him out of my house.”

It takes Ratonhnhaké:ton all of one afternoon to realize that Achilles does not want Haytham to leave his house. Stuck in bed as he is, directly over the dining room, he’s able to listen in on the both of them having supper that night. It starts off in a mockery of Colonial politeness: small-talk, discussions of Homestead production, the new foal, the weather, Ratonhnhaké:ton’s recovery—and then very quickly turns to the two of them verbally sparring like old hands at the training salle.

Some of the insults are, in fact, so colorful that Ratonhnhaké:ton finds himself stunned that they have not come to blows. Instead, soon enough they are both laughing, and then the discussion grows more heated, more biting, more _ugly_ , and then they laugh more.

He is half asleep, laudanum dulling the pain of his side, when Ratonhnhaké:ton wakes up in the black of his bedroom with the lamps out to Achilles yells from his downstairs bedroom: “Master Kenway, if you insist on tramping about with your cane over my head the same way you and your settlers have done to flatten the forests, I shall personally come up there and shove your cane so far up your ass you may find yourself singing _tenor_!”

They are friends, he realizes.

Strange bedfellows indeed.

 

 

Ratonhnhaké:ton recovers by inches. He listens to Dr. White’s explanations of his injuries—infected, some gangrene, deep injuries to his musculature, lucky he didn’t get an organ taken out, fever, loss of body weight and muscle—and then very calmly begins to just care for himself. He works up to eating again, although it is slow going, and he exercises, just a little, every day. Only, at first, his arms: he will not risk damaging his side.

The winter passes slowly like that.Ratonhnhaké:ton regains his strength—he begins being able to walk about the house with ease, although not for long, and soon he convinces his father into combat training with him, however reluctantly on Haytham’s part. They spar in the basement, cold and chilly as it is, and Haytham remains stationary on his good leg, more acting as a living dummy for Ratonhnhaké:ton to learn how to let his body move the way it needs to without injury. The winter nights are long and cold, and he goes out hunting rarely, not well enough to really do so properly. The house relies on the Homestead for its food, their populace happy to see Ratonhnhaké:ton up and about however rarely, and he keeps getting stronger. Healthier.

And he notices, too, the small changes between his father and Achilles. He tries not to, at first: after how disastrous his meddling with Norris and Myriam often was, Ratonhnhaké:ton has learned that the ways of love, whatever they are, are not something he understands in quite the same way as everyone else seems to. He has little and less interest of any sort in any kind of a relationship like that, although he has learned the signs.

At least he thinks he has. And Achilles and Haytham do not fight like Haytham and Ratonhnhaké:ton do—where every word out of their mouths is meant to wound one another, and in the time Ratonhnhaké:ton has been healing they have come almost to blows outside of sparring three separate times. No, when Haytham and Achilles taunt one another, it is to get a rise, to see if it can be one-upped. They rarely aim at old hurts, and instead needle new, superficial ones.

Ratonhnhaké:ton comes back from a hunting trip with Myriam late in the night a few days after the new year, and as he drags the two deer haunches he took from the kill to the kitchen, he passes by the library downstairs. The candles are lit, the fire roaring in the hearth, and Ratonhnhaké:ton grunts his greetings to Haytham and Achilles, who acknowledge him with a responding grunt and a raised hand respectively.

As he is moving on, Ratonhnhaké:ton hesitates for a split-second when Achilles says, “Haytham, stoke the fire, would you?” and he glances back to see his father doing it with only a half-hearted jibe at Achilles being _old and frail and on death’s door if he can’t pick up a_ _simple_ _fire poker_ , and when he shifts back to his chair, the both of them facing the fire and reading, he reaches his hand out over the arm, and sets it onto the arm of Achilles’ chair.

Atop his hand.

Achilles does not pull away. On the contrary, he turns his hand over, and curls his fingers around Haytham’s. It is an almost painfully chaste gesture, but Ratonhnhaké:ton still feels a lump in his throat and a twinge in his side at seeing something so intimate between the two of them.

After that, two nights later, when they make various excuses about wandering off to go do two different things at the exact same time when Ratonhnhaké:ton has been handily beating them both at checkers, he says, shortly, “I know,” and they both stare at him. He shrugs his shoulders, in mute acceptance, and finds Achilles grinning at him, his dark eyes twinkling.

“You must think me as foolish as a newlywed in spring,” Achilles says to him, and Ratonhnhaké:ton shrugs his shoulder again. Haytham, standing in the doorway, is glowering.

“You are both adults. You can make your own decisions. I do not care one way or the other.” He pauses, and then adds, “But you are rather reaching below your station, Achilles.”

“The nerve,” Haytham snarls, but without any heat.

In the spring, when the snow begins to melt and the roads start to clear, Dr. White clears Ratonhnhaké:ton as being well enough to leave the Homestead, should he so wish. He needs to return to parts of the Colonies and civilization: he has people he must meet with. He has been writing to his recruits, but his presence is badly needed in person in both Boston and New York. He wants to visit Kanatahséton as soon as he can, to return to Oiá:ner and try to, at last, close out the story of his life that really began there.

It is only two days later that Ratonhnhaké:ton comes down to the kitchen, dressed only in his breeches, and finds his father waiting for him, shoves a small package that seems to be bread and cheese and jerky and a jar of jam into his hands, rather than share words. It is first thing in the morning, and Haytham is not noted for being a particularly kindly early riser, so it is not all that unusual for him to be especially curt, but the particular combination of circumstances are new.

Ratonhnhaké:ton must make some kind of a questioning noise, because Haytham spins him around with his free hand and shoves him back up the stairs. “Get dressed,” he says, shortly. “We’re going to Virginia.”

Ratonhnhaké:ton has spent long enough around his father that he has grown used to the way that Haytham tends to articulate the things he needs. When he respects Ratonhnhaké:ton, he orders him to go chasing pell-mell after escaping soldiers because Ratonhnhaké:ton is faster, or tells him to take perimeter watch because Haytham’s eyes are beginning to go. He snaps half-formed insults that disparage Ratonhnhaké:ton’s character and aptitude, but then cannot actually give any concrete advice to fix said faults.

This newest order, when translated from whatever language it is Haytham’s emotions speak, really is, _I want to show you something important in_ _Virginia_ _, because I care about you, but I am an enormous raging jackass_ _so I can’t just say that_. So Ratonhnhaké:ton just goes upstairs, taking the breakfast with him, and gets dressed. He hesitates over his Assassin whites, and then leaves them off; he is not going out to kill.

Instead, he hems and haws over his other options—his own clothes, or Colonist’s clothes?

“Connor, we are going to die of boredom on this cart!” Achilles yells, and that makes the decision for him. He tugs on his breeches, comfortable worn leather he crafted himself, and a tunic. He hops about as he gets his moccasins on, the high-topped boots servicable even without his usual Assassin whites. The rest is quick—armbands, the long portion of his hair tied up properly out of his face, gloves, his bracers, his quiver and his bow slung over his shoulder, his tomahawk, and a long hunting knife down his boot, just in case, three rope-darts hung looped at his belt as he ties it off over his tunic. He clatters down the stairs a moment later, and out the front door to where the two men are waiting for him.

Achilles has the cart reins, and Haytham sits next to him on the running board. They both look at him. “Oh,” Haytham huffs, “Very well, if you must.”

Achilles mutters, under his breath, “Try not to start any massacres dressed like that this time,” and Ratonhnhaké:ton recognizes the fondness for what it is, grins as he puts his foot on the back of the cart, not hopping in as is his wont, trying to take it easy on his healing side as he steps into it, and then sits down.

There’s provisions for the trip in the back of the cart, but not much more than that. They aren’t taking a convoy to sell. Clothes to change into, although Ratonhnhaké:ton will simply wash and care for his along the way, with his bedroll shoved into one corner. Achilles, thinking of him as always. No tents, though: so they intend to stay in inns.

As if reading his mind, Achilles says, not unkindly, “I am a little too old to be roughing it, so I thought you might prefer an alternative.” Ratonhnhaké:ton nods, rather than saying anything, and sits down as the cart gets onto the road. It’s a slow start, as leaving the Homestead always is, but once they are properly moving along, the tension starts to lift a little. Achilles and Haytham bicker what probably passes for good-naturedly, Haytham snarling insults over Achilles’ driving and demanding to be given the reins in his most high-and-mighty accent; Achilles digging hard at the fact that Haytham, his sight so badly going he needa his glasses for more than just reading, could not be trusted to drive.

Ratonhnhaké:ton eats his breakfast as they drive, lazing in the back of the cart. He naps for a time, because he can, because he does not need to be on alert, and then he wakes up and talks a little with the two older men. He fishes around in the things that are in the back with him, and emerges after a time with a book one of them tossed into the back with him, and he reads it as the cart rumbles through the forests. They do not stop for lunch, instead merely eating on the road, and then Haytham takes over the reins.

The day passes like that. He dozes off and on, Achilles and Haytham talk and occasionally Ratonhnhaké:ton even chimes in, albeit rarely. They stop at nightfall at an inn, eat a hot dinner, and Ratonhnhaké:ton sleeps bundled up in the stable with the horses, the quiet stamp and snort of his companions a reassuring, relaxing lullaby.

They make good time to Virginia. Ratonhnhaké:ton takes a brief detour when they come upon a small group of bandits—he doesn’t kill anyone, but scares them off, and ensures they shall harass no more harmless travellers, catches up to the cart later that day. Nobody questions much about them: it’s almost incredible how little people care about two older men driving a cart with a half-asleep native in the back.

Ratonhnhaké:ton has never been as far south as Virginia—his travels have ended their ranging at Philadelphia, and even then, only very briefly. He knows Boston and New York like the palm of his own hand, but here he is as lost as a child within minutes. It is fortunate, then, that he has come with a guide, for Haytham seems to know precisely where he is going, driving the cart unerringly through small townships and around Richmond out to the plantation country, the black slaves in the fields making Ratonhnhaké:ton feel ill at east, until they reach a smaller side-path and turn off towards one of the farms.

It is a little overgrown—but not badly, just uninhabited for recent days. It is a handsome house, and Ratonhnhaké:ton says as much as his father carefully dismounts from the front of the cart, taking his cane as Achilles hands it to him, and fishes through the ring of keys he pulls from the inner pocket of his cloak, unlocking the gate. “Then you’re welcome to it, should you want it.” Haytham pulls the front gates wide, grimacing with the effort and his cane tucked under his arm, so that Achilles can drive the cart into the front walk, Ratonhnhaké:ton dismounting from the back to help his father shut the gates again.

He learns that night, after they open all the shutters to begin airing the place out and get a fire lit in the grate and go eat at a nearby tavern, that they have come to Virginia for Haytham to deal with the house. He intends to sell it, to clear out what things he needs from it, and be done with the whole affair.

Seeing his father back in his old clothes, his heavy navy cloak and fine brocade coat beneath it, his tricorn firmly upon his head, Ratonhnhaké:ton cannot avoid thinking about the fact that Haytham could return to being Grand Master of the Colonial Rite if he wished. It would be as easy as standing up and leaving.

Instead, the morning afterward, he lights every lamp in his office and begins to methodically pile things up, sorting through piles of papers and notebooks and journals. The night before, he decided none of the furniture was worth trying to keep because it had little meaning to him, so they appear to only be there for personal effects. When Ratonhnhaké:ton had asked him if there were slaves to sell, Haytham had gone still and silent and said, in a voice he had never heard from his father before, “I shall never repeat that atrocity, and I shall thank you to never insinuate as such.” Since then, Ratonhnhaké:ton has been all the more curious about the house, and what of his father’s secrets it hides.

As Haytham sorts, Achilles naps on the bed, and Ratonhnhaké:ton carries things down to the cart, parked in the stables. Trunks full of clothes, a frankly absurd number of weapons, one box of fine china and one box of silver, pairs of boots shoved into shipping crates. He comes up after one trip, out of breath and his side aching, and sits down in one of his father’s office chairs, watches him carefully.

Haytham is reading from a leatherbound journal, his expression unreadable, his lips pursed. “Father?” Ratonhnhaké:ton prompts, gently, waits until Haytham’s grey eyes flick up to him and he cocks a single, questioning brow. Ratonhnhaké:ton gestures briefly to the stack of journals on his desk. “Are they all yours?”

“Yes,” Haytham replies, shutting the one he was holding and tying it back shut. “Charles returned the one I had been writing in when he took my things from Fort George. I hadn’t expected to find it here.” He sets the journal atop the pile. “For the best, of course. I am frankly astounded he didn’t burn the damn things.” Ratonhnhaké:ton cocks his eyebrow back, in a mirror of his father’s own questioning expression. “They are rather salacious,” Haytham admits. “And not a little bit damning.”

“Why?” Although the last six months have changed their relationship significantly, Ratonhnhaké:ton still struggles to understand his father. Part of it, he is certain, is cultural: his father comes from a very different place, and a very different set of ideals. Not just Templar against Assassin, but Englishman against Kanien’keha:ka. There is something that has been bothering Ratonhnhaké:ton since they arrived, and he finally voices it. “Why come back here at all?”

“Because the executor of my will is dead,” Haytham replies, sorting through letters on his desk. “And I haven’t rewritten it since I discovered I have a son. Not that I thought you had the slightest interest in the house.” Ratonhnhaké:ton doesn’t. “So I need to deal with it, as one does with property.” Ratonhnhaké:ton is mostly frustrated with himself, in that he really did think Haytham lived either at Fort George or the Green Dragon for the last twenty years. Of _course_ he had a house. “Sell the building and the land, dispose of anything untoward, take what things I wish to keep.”

Haytham pauses, his lips pursed, as he picks up a letter and slits along the back of the envelope with his hidden blade.

“Father,” Ratonhnhaké:ton growls, frustrated, “That is _not_ how these are meant to be used.”

“I’ve been doing it since before you were born,” Haytham replies, without heat, as he scans the letter, his brow furrowed. “It hasn’t killed me yet.” Evidently, it is some recent missive. Or somewhat recent—not one Haytham has seen before. “Connor, let me have that chair.” Reluctantly, Ratonhnhaké:ton stands up, shuffling over to lean on the side of the desk as Haytham sits down, opening back up one box he has already closed, and takes out a sheet of paper, an envelope, a quill, and an inkwell.

The sound of his quill scratching on the paper and Achilles’ snores are the only noise in the room for a time, until Haytham blots the letter dry and folds it up into the envelope, takes out wax and seals it, stamping it with his Templar ring, and passes it to Ratonhnhaké:ton. “Mail that for me, would you?” It’s off-hand, and, out of curiosity, Ratonhnhaké:ton reads the address it is to go to.

“Who is Jennifer Scott?”

“My sister.”

Ratonhnhaké:ton blinks twice. “What,” he says.

“Oh, if you must be precise about it, my half-sister,” Haytham adds. “My father’s daughter before his marriage. She lives in the family home in London.” Ratonhnhaké:ton continues to stare at the letter, dumbfounded, until Haytham looks up at him, a wry, mocking smile curling the corner of his mouth. “Surely you cannot truly think that I sprung fully formed like Athena from the head of Zeus?” Ratonhnhaké:ton is still staring at him. “Jenny is your aunt, I suppose. You’re welcome to write to her yourself, actually. She would find the irony of my son being the Assassin that saw the downfall of my Rite delightful.”

“She knows?” Ratonhnhaké:ton asks, his voice strained. Haytham snorts.

“Of course she knows. Jenny thinks little and less of the Order, but she has always held at least _some_ regard for my becoming Grand Master in the Colonies. It was impressive enough at my age. She’s always been far more dedicated to your side of things, though.”

“’Our side’?” Ratonhnhaké:ton feels like he is drowning a little. His mother, when he was a child, told him almost nothing of his father—just his last name, Kenway, and that he was English, a man she had spent some months sharing her bed with before they had parted ways for a myriad of reasons. She had described him as a man of death, and little beyond that. He had, of course, had family as a child—cousins, aunts and uncles, his mother’s parents. But many of them are dead now, Kanen'tó:kon a stinging nettle in Ratonhnhaké:ton’s spirit most of all. With them lost to him, he has always just lived assuming that Haytham Kenway is an anomaly; a single, pulsating star-bright existence glowing out and overshadowing the darkest of skies.

His father has a sister. Ratonhnhaké:ton has an aunt, living in London. She may not even know he exists. Does he have cousins, whom he has never met? Grandparents?

“Your grandfather was an Assassin,” Achilles says, from the bed. Ratonhnhaké:ton snaps his head to the side to look at the old man, but he has not sat up, his hat pulled down over his nose. “I never met the man, but Adéwalé always spoke quite highly of him. He was apparently quite skilled; albeit a bit of a drunk.” Ratonhnhaké:ton is staring. He knows he is staring. Haytham now lifts _both_ brows at him, mocking.

“Does it so surprise you?” Ratonhnhaké:ton tries to make his expression change, but it remains locked halfway between bafflement and horror. “My sister and I differ significantly on our views on the two Orders—albeit not as far as I land from Master Davenport. There’s a great deal of trauma in both our thoughts, and she thought I should leave the Rite for a variety of reasons. My staying drove a wedge between us, although there was already a wide gap. She is more than ten years older than I, and lived a difficult life far from me.” Ratonhnhaké:ton can sense that his father is talking circles; leaving more unspoken that spoken. There is some old, raw horror there, one Haytham will not speak aloud.

“What happened?”

“I’ve no intention—“ Haytham begins, just as Achilles says, “He killed Reginald Birch.” Ratonhnhaké:ton has no idea who Reginald Birch is, or was. But it seems important, nevertheless.

Haytham groans aloud, and pulls his glasses off. “ _Must_ you?” He snaps at Achilles, who huffs a tired laugh. “I’ve no intention of trying to explain _that_ to Connor.”

“I can understand it,” Ratonhnhaké:ton bristles, half-standing, and Haytham waves a hand at him to shut him up.

“Not because of that, boy.” Ratonhnhaké:ton has not been a boy for a long time, but bites back the desire to roll his eyes at his father even still. “Because it was a harrowing experience, and I fear not one in which I come off in a particularly good light. Regardless, yes, I did kill him, although Jenny dearly wishes she had been the one to drive the blade through his heart. The simplest narrative is the truest, Connor—I remained in the Rite for it allowed me to pursue those things I found important, but I have always, as Achilles _insists_ upon reminding me at the most inconvenient moments, thought like an Assassin.”

There is wry humor in his voice when he adds, softer, “My father, I am certain, would be pleased to hear it.”

“So...” Ratonhnhaké:ton says, gesturing with the letter to the journals, “Is it all in there?”

“Yes,” Haytham says, distracted again by a ledger. “And someday, I may give you the cipher code to read it. Ideally after I’m dead, so I won’t have to answer any of your inane questions. Are you going to mail that letter, or must I drag my crippled leg out of the house myself?”

Ratonhnhaké:ton really does roll his eyes this time. And goes to mail the letter.

 

 

He ends up sending his own letter as well, scrawled on a barrel at the nearest inn, along with his father’s. He has no idea what Haytham wrote, but he does his best to fill in some blanks about the last year and a half, and returns after he has seen the letters promised to the next delivery. They spend four more days in Virginia before returning to the Homestead, and it is on this trip back that Ratonhnhaké:ton returns to his village and finds it deserted but for the ghost of she who came before, and he spends a long time sitting in the longhouse and mourning.

He is not entirely certain which thing precisely for, but he mourns, his head ducked and his hands pressed over his eyes.

He makes his own way back to the Homestead, moving on foot and slowly, taking his time in the valleys and hills of his childhood and trying to remember what his life was like, all those years ago. He knows he will eventually be able to hunt down his tribe, but he does not know if that is the place for him, not any more.

Everyone he knew as a child is either dead or so distant he can barely feel like they are the same people any more. As much as he feels a gulf between himself and the Colonists, their worlds so far removed they could not collide even if he tried, he feels just as far from the Kanien’keha:ka, too. The way they think—the way _he_ thinks—they are too different.

It is not being an Assassin. It is not even the war, although that tore those few final bonds so far asunder that it is hard for Ratonhnhaké:ton to even recognize where it was they ripped. It is the way _he_ has changed. His own way of visualizing himself and others.

It is strange, and he does not feel quite right in his body.

 

 

Three weeks later, he calls the first meeting of his Assassins since the end of the war, and brings them all to the Homestead. His first six apprentices are Assassins in their own right now, and they bring their recruits along with them, until the Homestead and all the extra rooms and stables are stuffed with visitors.

They hold their meeting at night, and every surface in the room is covered, the library fit to bursting. The agenda is brief, comparatively, and Ratonhnhaké:ton mostly lets everyone else do the talking, sitting astride his backwards chair and listening carefully to what they all have to say, discussions over the current situation of Templar involvement now that the Colonial Rite is disbanded (and there’s lots of gazes shot toward Haytham, who sits calmly and quietly in a corner, reading a book of poetry and saying nothing) until someone mentions the European Rite seems to be making moves, writing in a cipher none of them are familiar with.

Then Haytham abruptly gets up, picks up his cane, and leaves the room. Everyone hushes to silence as he crosses the hall to the bedroom he and Achilles share, and then he returns a moment later with a small leather-bound notebook in his hand. “Here,” he says, shortly, tossing the book to Stephane, who catches it, in confusion. “That should be all the ciphers they are using."

Ratonhnhaké:ton stares at him.

“I have very little love lost with the European Rite,” Haytham adds, staring Ratonhnhaké:ton down. “If I’ve the phrase correctly, I believe it goes _give them hell_. Please, you are all perfectly welcome to.”

The silence is deafening.

“Haytham,” Achilles counsels, softly, “If you’ve a mind to turn sides, you must needs explain yourself.”

“Turning sides requires I was allied firmly to begin with, and you and I both know there’s almost nothing of truth in that.” Haytham goes back to his chair and sits down once again. “I shall explain nothing. If you all want an answer so desperately, then you can come up with it on your own.”

Ratonhnhaké:ton does no such thing.

He writes to his aunt.

In the coming months, they exchange a volley of letters, culminating in one that Ratonhnhaké:ton receives two days before Evacuation Day, passed to him just as he and Haytham are on the road to New York. He reads it in the cart as Haytham drives, cursing every rut in the road that causes his glasses to rattle on his face.

The letter from his aunt is no less than fifteen pages long, her hand cramped even to fit that much. It began with _I shall not give you the lurid details for to even entertain the thought has kept me up until dawn these past four nights, but an abridgment shall hardly do it justice. Instead, what follows is, to the best of my ability, the truth of those things which did shape thirty years of our lives._

It is, indeed, a harrowing tale. Ratonhnhaké:ton reads it in silence, turning each page front and back to follow the story. Haytham never asks what it is he is reading, just keeps driving, until Ratonhnhaké:ton sets his hand on his father’s wrist and stills the reins. “Well?” Haytham asks, in his abruptest fashion. “Don’t turn this into some farcical production of pity and agony. I lived it once, I’ve no desire to live it again through you.”

“No.” Ratonhnhaké:ton looks at his father’s face, and tries to find in that visage, so known now to him, something of what the man who had been his father, when he was born. That man who had died, so soon afterward. And made his father a better man, yes—but a more fragile one, shattered and doubting. He can understand, now, how the Colonial Rite fell apart so easily. Ratonhnhaké:ton can see why his father clung so desperately to Charles, even in the face of logic. “Not that.”

Instead, he pulls his father into a hug.

It is the first time they have ever hugged. It is a strange experience. Haytham stiffens in his arms, and says nothing, does nothing. He is like a statue, cold unfeeling marble, until eventually he sets his hand on Ratonhnhaké:ton’s elbow. “You did very well,” Ratonhnhaké:ton says instead. “For knowing so little of what it was you had to do.”

Haytham laughs, slightly. He knows Ratonhnhaké:ton does not mean being a Templar. He means being a father. “I can’t take all the credit. Achilles and your mother both did most of the work. I just made sure the mould set.”

“Thank you,” Ratonhnhaké:ton says instead of rising to the bait, and his father goes abruptly silent.

“Yes,” he murmurs eventually. “Well.”

Ratonhnhaké:ton burns the letter that night, and never again finds himself in need to ask who Reginald Birch was, or whether or not they can trust Haytham when he starts just ripping missives from Ratonhnhaké:ton’s hands, balancing Assassin ledgers, or giving pointed, nasty remarks about the improvement of recruits at the Homestead.

Haytham is giving back in his own way, however frustrating that way is. He is completing the path he was set on as a child, the path he walked as an adult.

Together, though, father and son go to New York for Evacuation Day. They watch the ships pull from the harbor, fire their shots, and say very little. They share a single small bag of street nuts, toss a few coins down to some beggars, fill their wagon with provisions for the Homestead, and then, when Ratonhnhaké:ton turns his steps away from the harbor, he pauses as Haytham falls into step beside him, leaning on his cane like it’s nothing but an affectation. “I am going to see Washington,” he reminds his father, and Haytham’s nostrils flare.

“I am well aware,” he snaps. “As am I. I would like to remind him again that he and I have _unfinished_ business, just as you do.” Ratonhnhaké:ton debates taking to the rooftops, leaving his father behind, but just purses his lips instead, and walks beside him across town to the spot where Ratonhnhaké:ton has had Washington tracked to. He is staying in a smaller inn, avoiding the traffic of a major wayhouse, and this particular afternoon he has taken to stading atop a nearby hill, alone, watching the boats retreat.

He does not hear them approach, and neither Ratonhnhaké:ton nor Haytham have any interest in gaining his attention, so they settle, leaning against a low wall that surrounds the inn, Ratonhnhaké:ton perched, Haytham sitting to take the weight off of his bad leg, and they wait for Washington to notice them. It takes long enough that Ratonhnhaké:ton begins to tire of waiting for the element of surprise, but eventually the General _does_ turn, and when he sees them, he seems to jump halfway out of his own skin.

It is not Ratonhnhaké:ton that he stares at. It is Haytham.

“George,” his father says, his tone so friendly it is clearly false.

“You died,” Washington replies, clearly wrong-footed, his face unusually expressive in its pinch and pain, his jaw oddly set.

Haytham spreads his arms. “Rumors of my death have been sadly exaggerated, I believe. You’ve my son’s penchant for drama to thank for that.” Ratonhnhaké:ton debates kicking him. In the bad leg.

“Commander,” Ratonhnhaké:ton says, inclining his head, and he receives a distracted, “Connor,” in return, Washington still staring at Haytham.

“George,” Haytham continues, inspecting his nails, picking imaginary dirt out from under them, “We’ve known each other a great many years, so I hope you will take my advice worth more than a grain of salt. From one of Edward’s protégés to another—“

“Haytham—“

“ _Don’t cock this up_ ,” Haytham snaps in a voice like iron and ice. “If you and yours fuck this precious peace up, that’s it. You know that, don’t you? This is your one chance at this. Keep your temper under check and _fix it_.”

“I’m no politician,” Washington snaps back. “I want nothing to do with the governing of these states. I have already resolved to resign my commission, and I am returning to Mount Vernon to be a farmer. That is all I ever was, as you and Charles liked so often to remind me.”

“You are not a farmer now,” Ratonhnhaké:ton says, crossing his arms over his chest and glaring Washington down. He is—just slightly—taller than the older man, and it sets the Commander wrong-footed as it always does. Ratonhnhaké:ton is the only person taller than him. “You are a General. You have a responsibility. The United States need you.”

“It’d be terrible,” Haytham begins, and the casualness in his voice is completely affected, and the sheer ease to him makes Ratonhnhaké:ton almost more uncomfortable than he would be if his father was angry. “If something happened to you, when the States need you so very terribly.”

“Say what you mean, sir.”

Washington sounds like he’s near to blows.

Haytham looks up at him, and his face is expressionless. “I mean what I say, sir. You are indispensable. Treat yourself as such. My death caused but one man to mourn. Yours would cause half a million. Think on it.”

Ratonhnhaké:ton has nothing to add, for his father has said all that needs to be. Haytham doffs his hat. “Good day, George. Best of luck with the planting.” Not for the first time, Ratonhnhaké:ton wonders just how his father learned to fear nothing at all.

 

 

The next three years pass uneventfully, for the most part. The Templars sent over by the European Rite meet nasty ends; the government struggles but survives; the United States grow and change. Ratonhnhaké:ton continues to train his burgeoning Assassins, spending weeks and sometimes months on the Homestead during low seasons or when his presence is needed.

It is late in the winter of 1785, but a week before Christmas, when Ratonhnhaké:ton is woken by his father’s hand on his shoulder. “Don’t draw on me,” Haytham says softly, stilling Ratonhnhaké:ton before he could pounce the older man with his hidden blade free from its bracer. “Get up.” Ratonhnhaké:ton rolls over to face his father, vision foggy still from sleep, and sees Haytham standing alone in the center of his bedroom, a lit candle held up in his hand.

Haytham has grown markedly older, these last few years. He is leaning on his cane, in only a nightshirt and stockings, and his white hair is loose about his face. It makes him look even paler, washing out his skin, his thick glasses slid down his nose. His expression is strange enough that it takes Ratonhnhaké:ton a long time to place it, half-asleep as he is.

It’s frightened. Shocked.

Ratonhnhaké:ton sits up. “What,” he says, abruptly wide awake. Haytham gives him a brief, ghost of a smile.

“Achilles is dead.” Ratonhnhaké:ton stares at him. “In his sleep. It woke me.” Ratonhnhaké:ton slides out of bed, chilled immediately in his smallclothes, and finds a shirt and breeches, wrestles into both and socks as he follows his father back out of the room, Haytham moving slowly ahead of him, down the stairs carefully, his cane tucked under his arm as he holds the candle up for them both to see by, letting the bannister take his weight.

Achilles is, indeed, dead in bed. Stilled, gently, a half-smile on his lips. Ratonhnhaké:ton does not bother to check for foul play—his father has shared Achilles’ bed long enough that had he wanted to do the old man in, he could have a long time before. Besides, his bracer is off: he could not have. Instead, Ratonhnhaké:ton just stands beside his father, next to the bed, as they both sit, silent, in something passing as grief.

They bury him the following afternoon. In the snow on the ground, it takes Ratonhnhaké:ton almost the entire day to dig the grave, the shovel bending and warping from hitting the frozen dirt and sod. The coffin is simple, a wood cross marking the spot where a stone will be added come spring. Ratonhnhaké:ton does not speak, standing behind the grave marker, and Haytham does not attend—but he does watch, from the windows of the house.

Three days later, Haytham Kenway vanishes.

He leaves nothing at all except the cipher key for his journals, on the made bed he shared with Achilles, along with a letter that Achilles had addressed to Ratonhnhaké:ton. His personal effects—his clothes, his weapons, his shoes, his horse—are gone, but everything else remains. Whatever money he took, Ratonhnhaké:ton had never known it existed.

His Assassins search the Colonies daily, send letters, try to track him. They follow every mention of a man who could be Haytham Kenway. In the end, they find nothing at all.

Ratonhnhaké:ton does not see him for three years.

 

 

The streets in New York on the 30th of April of 1789 are so full that there is hardly room to breathe, let alone stand. That is why Ratonhnhaké:ton takes to the rooftops rather than remain below, finding a space close enough to hear the speech Washington gives, as loudly as he can—which is not very. He and Ratonhnhaké:ton have sent a few letters between them in the last seven years, and Ratonhnhaké:ton has learned that his teeth pain has finally reached a point the man can barely speak, even with Ratonhnhaké:ton’s herb lore helping reduce it. But their friendship, forever sundered, has become at least something slightly breathing, and Ratonhnhaké:ton would not miss this for the world.

America is finally becoming something. This country that he killed and bled for is almost there, wherever _there_ may be.

A scrape of shingle rouses him, and Ratonhnhaké:ton, out of sight of the crowd below, has his hidden blade poised to draw, his hand on his tomahawk, as he half-spins, looking to the back of the roof of the building he is perched on. A moment later, a man hauls himself up, and cocks his head at Ratonhnhaké:ton with an enigmatic, unreadable smile.

“Father,” Ratonhnhaké:ton says. He eyes the man. "You are very sprightly, for a cripple."

“Connor,” Haytham replies, as he scrambles the rest of the way onto the roof, carefully makes his way over to sit down next to Ratonhnhaké:ton, his cane tucked under his arm. “I remember this being easy,” he huffs, out of breath, settling his cane in his lap. “Have I missed much?”

“No,” Ratonhnhaké:ton replies. They’ve not even really started yet. Just lots of speeches. “I am...surprised to see you here,” he continues at last, after they’ve settled into a companionable silence. “I had thought when you had left you would not be coming back.”

His father hums noncommittally. “I had some things I needed to see to." He does not add any more—that appears to be all he intends to share. "Just for my own peace of mind. I was unsure if I would return myself—did you read my journals?” Ratonhnhaké:ton nods. “What do you think?”

“That you are a very difficult and frustrating man.”

“I thank you for the compliment. It’s a terribly trying façade to keep up.” Haytham cocks his head to look at Ratonhnhaké:ton. “What do you think of our Mr. President?”

“It is too soon to say.”

“Good! You’ve begun to learn. God knows it took me long enough to knock some sense into your thick head.”

They fall silent as the inauguration continues, listening to the speeches and watching as Washington swears upon a bible, looking genuinely humble, contrite, afraid. They are entering a strange new world. One terribly unlike anything else that has come before.

“Father?”

“Yes, son?”

“What will you do now?”

“I hadn’t given it much thought. I wondered if you might want to get out of the office, so to speak. Go on another adventure.”

“The Assassins need me.”

“I’ve been Grand Master,” Haytham says, a hint of good humor in his aging voice, as sunny as the day above them, glinting off his glasses, washing out his white hair. “I could always give being Mentor a try.”

Ratonhnhaké:ton shuts his eyes, and, grinning, says: “It is good to have you back, Father.”

For the first time, he finds he means it.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr/twitter @jonphaedrus


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